European eschatology denied pre-Christian civilizations any real achievement

Evidence

Europe was God’s world, the focus of divine attention; the rest of mankind belonged for the moment to Satan. For perhaps a thousand years or more, western European world historical consciousness was transformed into theosophy, demonology, and mythology. And, indeed, in a most profound sense European notions of history, both theological and pseudo-theological, negated the possibility of the true existence of earlier civilizations. The perfectability of mankind, the eschatological vision, precluded the possibility of pre-Christian civilization having achieved any remarkable development in moral law, social organization, or natural history (science). — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 450

Categorization

• XREF: The Christian doctrine of mankind’s perfectibility precluding genuine pre-Christian achievement is a direct intellectual ancestor of the Eurocentric historiography Robinson dismantles — and of the Orientalism Said describes.
• DEEPTHINKING: The argument that an eschatological teleology structurally negates the possibility of prior civilizations’ authenticity is dense and paradigm-shifting: it explains why European historiography could not ‘see’ Egypt or West Africa, a cognitive constraint rather than mere ignorance.